Patients visit medical providers, such as physicians, to seek advice on a wide variety of medical conditions. During an office visit, the patient typically communicates a particular ailment or symptoms to the physician and the physician conducts an examination of the patient. Based on the office visit and examination, the physician may order further laboratory tests and/or other diagnostic procedures on the patient to confirm or rule-out a particular medical condition.
It generally takes from hours to several days before the results of laboratory tests and diagnostic procedures become available to the medical provider. Once the test results become available, the physician must notify the patient of the results of the laboratory tests and/or diagnostic procedures. The test results may indicate a normal medical condition for which further medical consultation or treatment is not required. For example, the test results that the medical provider must communicate to patients may merely comprise simple information such as, for example, “your blood test is normal,” “your cholesterol is within normal limits,” “your x-ray or MRI is negative,” and like results. In other instances, however, the test results may indicate a more serious condition that requires additional testing or immediate medical attention. In fact, the test results may expose a life threatening medical condition which requires immediate medical treatment.
It is estimated that between 44,000 and 98,000 patients die every year in the United States of America from medical errors. While the vast majority of the deaths from medical errors result from mistakes in treatment or diagnosis, about 2 to 3 percent can be attributed to errors in communicating medical information from the medical provider to the patient. (A String of Mistakes: The Importance of Cascade Analysis in Describing, Counting and Preventing Medical Errors, Woolf, et al, August, 2004).
Physicians often have a difficult time contacting patients with results of medical tests. The difficulties can be attributed to several factors. First, the patient may not be available at the time the physician or physician's staff attempts to contact the patient by telephone. In addition, the physician must comply with medical privacy laws, thereby preventing the physician from leaving medical information or test results with third parties or on telephone answering machines. Furthermore, if a message to contact the physician is left on an answering machine or with a third party, the patient may have difficulty in contacting a medical provider by telephone or simply forget to call the physician back. Certain studies indicate that is takes about 4 telephone calls per test result to contact the patient. Taking this average, if a particular physician orders 2500 tests per year, it would take 10,000 telephone calls per year to communicate the tests results to the patients. Thus, physicians and their office staff waste valuable time and resources with repeated attempts to contact patients to communicate tests results and other medical information.
It is also necessary for physicians and other medical providers to confirm that patients actually receive the medical information. As mentioned above, the medical information could inform a patient of a life threatening condition. If the medical provider does not provide the information in a timely manner, the medical provider could be exposed to liability in failing to inform a patient of a medical condition.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a secure and private method and system for providing information from an information provider to a recipient, without having to attempt to contact recipient numerous times. Such a method and system finds useful application in the communication of medical information from medical providers to patients, thereby avoiding having to attempt to contact patients numerous times. Such a method and system would minimize wasted time and resources of medical providers, would increase patient safety, and would reduce medical malpractice liability risk for medical providers.